Will Kanye And Other Celebs “Bite” The New Bitcoin Craze? CoinyeWest?

January 3rd, 2014 by Tech Staff

“In Yeezus We Trust.” Sound like a saying you want adorning your hard-earned cash? Well, a new digital currency might be sporting the motto soon. It’s called Coinye West — the newest in a series of so-called cryptocurrencies, like BitCoin — only this time sporting the likeness of, you guessed it, Kanye West.

Now for those of you not feverishly mining away on your Bitcoins, according to The Washington Post, crytpocurrencies “are basically decentralized financial systems with their own invented currencies. They’re appealing because they’re anonymous and peer-to-peer … and thus potentially augur an age of new, more open financial services.”

In recent years a slew of such cryptocurrencies have hit the web, including LiteCoin — a more consumer-grade version of BitCoin. DogeCoin, a digital currency based on a talking dog meme. And of course the original BitCoin which has been around since 2009. But the creators of Coinye say this specific digital currency will be a bit different.

Speaking anonymously to the the crew at Vice’s Noisey they said, “Our goal with Coinye West is to make it easier for people to use cryptocurrency. Right now, it’s kind of a dark art for people to mine coins. We plan on releasing a front end to the ‘mining’ programs called CoinyeMiner.”

That front end mining program will reportedly be the part that makes the whole system easier for the cryptocoin curious. Although, one Twitter user may have already come up with a better name for it. How about “Gold Digger”? (Via Twitter / @GoldenGatsby) BitCoin made a big splash in 2013 with a roller coaster year in terms of valuation. As ReadWrite points out the currency was valued at just $13.51 at the beginning of the year, before skyrocketing to over $1,000 each — then plummeting to less than half that following a crackdown by the Chinese government.

Now to be clear Ye hasn’t personally backed the currency — which is set to go live January 11th of this year. He hasn’t responded to this tweet from Coinye West explicitly asking his opinion either. It’s too soon to tell if your spending money will come in Coinyes in the future, but if it does there’s always the possibility other celebrities could get in on the act.